rising from the waters,
blue-green, salty, a misty,
shrouded figment of experience,
the attitude of long-winged
white birds turning slowly
in air,

spewed from boiling, seething
masses of molten rock, a pristine
diamond distilled of blatant
vital gestures on sultry
summer nights,

eased from placid mirror lakes,
a smooth silent cube, formed
with detachment, the cold
oblique stare of a fish’s eye,
glimpsed suddenly beneath
transparent waters,

sucked from tepid marshes,
a rough-hewn kernel of
twilight, a sediment of
early mornings in dingy towns,
first naked rays of light
striking broken glass in
needless elaboration,

drawn from crystal glacial lakes,
iridescent bubbles of time,
ecstatic constructions of
nothing, accretions of mental
experience, notes on the
passage of time, wafted on
terse winds, blown and dashed
in gales and shouts, sent reeling
through time on the fingertips
of millions of upturned hands,
but calm and contracted, solid
with closed eyes, groping,
tentative constructions poised
on the rim, bridges into the
background of time, eternal
within the impermanent mind